Agriculture is the oldest and the most distinctively fundamental industry in human society. It is by no means the easiest. It knows scarcely any limitation in the hours of toil, and its most strenuous and imperative duties come at a time of the year when city dwellers seek the cool shades of the holiday season. But it has some strong compensations. There is the consciousness of being in an occupation absolutely essential to the existence of humanity, and one that involves dwelling near to Nature’s heart, unafraid of privation and want. Rural life has opportunities and spaces for meditation, which is in danger of becoming a lost art in some other spheres. Farms are feeders of cities in more ways than one. They give leaders to the public life and learned professions of the nation, and but for the fresh blood that farms pour into cities every year, these centres would die of pernicious anemia. Those of us who were born on farms and recall our boyhood days can understand how, in the nerve-wracking anxieties elsewhere, men can enter into Whittier’s fine picture of the country lad who knows nothing about insomnia and indigestion:
“Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy with cheek of tan,
With thy turned up pantaloons
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lips, redder still,
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face
Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy—